Interview with Youth MP Ihorangi Reweti-Peters

Kia ora everyone!

I hope you have all had a wonderful day,

Today I will be talking about my interview with the Youth MP who is representing Rino Tirikatene, Ihorangi is 16. He is very big about bringing the stigma to abuse in care.

The first thing I asked him was, what are three things no one knows about you? He started off by saying he has 3 cats whose names are winter, Elvis and beauty, Two of them are ragdolls. He used to stay in Martinborough and his favourite colour is Yellow.

The next question I asked him was what are three things he wants to achieve in Youth Parliament 2022? The first thing he wants to achieve is to bring attention to the stigma that young people in care get stereotyped as criminals even sometimes terrorists. He wants everyone to know that young people aren't criminals, it's just the trauma that they carry which makes them act out the way they do. He wants to bring light to the issue.

The second thing he wants to achieve is, getting better access to mental health for young people in care, ihorangi is passionate about it because if you look at the national suicide statistics, and you compare them to young people in care you can see they are really high. Ihorangi then goes on to say that 1 in 4 young people will have a suicide thought through their time in care. The third thing advocating for better Maori health, throughout the country

Ihorangi is really excited about Youth Parliament because he is looking forward to meeting other youth MPs that are interested in the stuff he's interested in and passionate about, he's also excited to meet other MPs all over the house. As well as connecting more with his MP Rino Tirikatene.

The last question I asked him was if you could be an MP for the day, who would you want to be. He said the Hon Kelvin Davis because he looks over Oranga Tamariki and he thinks that will be a great way to take action on the issue he cares about the most.

Thank you all for taking the time to read this blog post. I hope you all have a wonderful evening :)